Will Clintonism meet its Waterloo in Britain’s election? That mix of metaphors reflects the contradiction of an election campaign now half-completed here. Tony Blair, leader of what he calls “New Labor,” is campaigning as a Clinton-style New Democrat, and behaving like a frightened incumbent. Prime Minister John Major is playing the challenger.
Blair has for months been portrayed by polls and press as the next prime minister. But his poll lead has declined, and more than half the electorate now claims to see no difference between the parties–the first time this has happened in modern British elections. It is an indication that Blair could become the victim of his Clinton-style issue-free campaign.
As poll leader, his problem has been not to lose. When a national television debate was proposed, it was Blair who backed away. A “misspeak,” as Washington likes to say, might ruin him. Major, on the other hand, robustly assumes that he can only improve his position.
Blair became the Labor Party’s leader following Labor’s defeat in the 1992 national election–a surprise defeat, be it noted; the polls had also said in 1992 that Labor would win. But in the U.S., Bill Clinton won his presidential election that year, and Blair took note.
Old Labor’s embittered and outmoded trade unionism and entrenched and opportunist Trotskyite “militants” were at war with the middle-class reformism Blair represented. He imposed his ideas with force and political adroitness.
He saw Labor’s only chance for success in becoming a classless “New Democratic” party acceptable to moderate voters. He freed the party from the reputation for budget and union irresponsibility it had earned during the Callaghan and Wilson prime ministerships of the 1960s and 1970s.
Blair outmaneuvered the Militants who controlled many Labor town halls, and discarded Labor’s traditional commitment to nationalized industry. He changed the rules that had given the unions a veto over Labor party policies. Even Margaret Thatcher smiled on him.
He and his shadow education minister sent their children to private schools, easing middle-class anxiety over Labor’s record on education. His own choice of a political career had been influenced by Christian socialist thought, and both he and his wife came to be seen as real rather than political churchgoers. That also marked Blair off from Labor’s recent past, and recalled an older Labor tradition.
He succeeded in remaking Labor into a party which today appeals to the moderate, but reform-minded, citizen. To Tory voters, its unstated message is that it can provide the no-risk alternative to a Conservative government corrupted by too many years of power and increasingly abused privilege.
That is where things stood when the campaign formally began, at the end of March. Labor seemed a certain winner. The Conservatives claimed credit for what they said was Britain’s economic success story, and reminded voters of the bad old days under Labor.
But not everyone was convinced that this bright new British economy really existed. The statistics might say so, but not even economists put much faith in Britain’s official statistics.
Anyway, few Conservative campaigners seemed really to believe that their party had a chance to win. The Tories’ recurrent money and sex scandals made many of them think the party would be better off with a defeat.
However, Blair has now rekindled hope for Major. His determined avoidance of controversial campaign positions, his cautious positioning of Labor in the ideological shadow of the Conservatives–meant to reassure the crossover voter–seemed by last week to have become a negative rather than a positive factor for him in the campaign.
In the last two weeks, there has been confusion or equivocation on Labor’s platform commitments to new union legislation, devolution of power to a new Scottish parliament, on privatization, and on relations with Europe and the European common currency.
The questions asked of Bill Clinton in last year’s presidential campaign are now being asked of Tony Blair. What does he really stand for? Where are his principles?
Blair is not naturally a Zelig figure, despite his effort to become one in this campaign. There is too much to him to be able to pretend to be no one and everyone at the same time.
But he has overlearned from Bill Clinton and now has put himself at risk. The British electoral context is not the American: participation is high; the formal campaign is short and concentrated; and the kind of television spot campaigning that obfuscates issues and camouflages candidates in the United States is outlawed here.
Britain’s electorate is more demanding than the American, and less jaded and alienated. Blair was right to see that Labor had to move towards the center, as the New Democrats had concluded in the U.S. But he was wrong to think that Clintonism as a campaign method is exportable. He and his party may pay for that mistake.
